Forum Replies Created
- Posts
My worst pairing would be Al Pease and Yuji Ide. The former remains the only driver in F1 history to be have been disqualified for driving too slowly (I believe that at the time he was disqualified from the 1969 Canadian GP having completed less than half of the number of laps the leaders had managed), the latter will perhaps harshly (he hardly had any time to adapt to the car or the circuits) almost certainly forever be remembered for having his Super license revoked after just four races.
Pease passed away last year so if I am restricted to drivers who are currently alive, then I’m tempted to go for Narain Karthikeyan, who never impressed me at all and caused a couple of incidents while front runners attempted to lap him (both Vettel and Rosberg crashed trying to do this in the 2012 season). Taki Inoue and Giovanni Lavaggi were also both pretty bad!
Just to make things even harder for Ide and his team mate (or if you prefer, to make certain they never actually qualify for a race) give them a 1997 MasterCard Lola to drive…
I will be the first to admit that Maldonado is rather frustrating, but there is no way I could include a grand prix winner in my worst line up. He may have been somewhat fortunate to be promoted to pole after Hamilton was excluded from qualifying, but he didn’t put a foot wrong in the race and it was a fantastic day for him and the Williams team. ‘De Crasheris’ also had some decent races, although from what I’ve seen of him I’d tend to agree that like Maldonado most of the time, his peaks were too rare to make up for the bad and/or frustrating races.
I agree that Hulkenberg’s record in junior formulae suggested an exceptional talented, but as someone who has kept an eye on him since he graduated to F1 I am beginning to think his chance has gone. He needed to have an impressive season this year, and I thought it would be a strong one for him as he was staying at the same team for the first time in his career, but it just hasn’t been quite enough apart from the odd very strong race (Austria is a standout). His two-year contract with Force India leaves him out of sync with the top drives – there will probably be seats available at Ferrari and McLaren (admittedly they’ve a lot of work to do to recover their status as a top team) in 2017, possibly at Mercedes as well and elsewhere if there are substantial team switches, which I think there might be, and by the time it expires he will be 30. He is now fighting to keep his F1 going, unless he has a stroke of luck, a la Mark Webber getting into a front running Red Bull in 2009 after the regulation changes. If anything, of the Force India I think Sergio Perez has a better chance of getting another top drive – I don’t think he was ready for the McLaren drive in 2013 but he is still only 25 and with some strong performances since the summer break I think if he has a good season in 2016 he may come into contention for one of the better seats.
Vergne in my opinion is worth another shot at F1, but I don’t view him as a potential world champion. Stoffel Vandoorne to me is another matter, although I was pleased to hear that Button would continue to drive for McLaren next year I think it’s important that Stoffel gets his chance sooner rather than later, assuming his campaign doesn’t implode and he goes on to win the GP2 title it will be one of the more impressive title wins in the history of that championship (I would say certainly more so than Jolyon Palmer).
DEBUT RACE:
Hamilton: At the age 22, he qualifies fourth in a McLaren-Mercedes at the 2007 Australian GP. He passes his double world champion team mate at the first corner although he loses out to Alonso after the final pit stops, nonetheless he finishes third, the first rookie to finish on the podium in his first race for 11 years.
Vettel: At the age of 19 (he turned 20 a few weeks later), he qualifies seventh in a BMW Sauber at the 2007 US GP. He loses places after running wide at the first corner, nonetheless he finishes eighth (albeit helped by retirements from team-mate Heidfeld and Nico Rosberg) to become IIRC the youngest driver to score a point at the time.In my opinion think Hamilton edges this one, though I would say that Vettel’s age and equipment (the 2007 BMW was a good car, not) should be taken into consideration. However, Vettel was not ahead of Heidfeld at any point during the race whereas Hamilton was running ahead of Alonso for most of his debut, and he finished one place above where he qualified (which I would say is actually more difficult in a top car) whereas Vettel finished one place lower than where he started even allowing for failures from two drivers who would have finished above him.
I should add that although the 2007 US GP was Vettel’s first race, his first participation in a Grand Prix, his first race weekend was actually the 2006 Turkish GP where he ran in practice as BMW’s third driver. His chance came following the promotion of Robert Kubica to the race team, funnily enough in place of Jacques Villeneuve, who was the last rookie prior to Hamilton to finish on the podium in his first grand prix!
I’d tend to agree with 2010 as being the best race for the same reasons everyone else has mentioned – I particularly enjoyed watching Robert Kubica fighting his way up to sixth (IIRC) after dropping to twelfth following his final stop, proving that you can overtake on this circuit albeit with the advantage of fresh rubber. It was also more exciting than usual at the front and as the battle was between Alonso and Vettel it was important for the championship too – especially as in some recent seasons (2011 and 2013, really) the title fight had been all but decided by the Singapore race.
The 2008 race was dramatic at the time but it has since been marred for me by the emergence of the Crashgate scandal, so I now feel that the race basically ended after lap 12 and that the safety car had such a big effect on the race that everything that happened after Piquet hit the wall at turn 17 was directly a result of that incident. I absolutely hated the rule preventing drivers from pitting under the safety car even when they were running out of fuel (I know it was ostensibly introduced for safety reasons, but in practice its main effect was to unfairly penalise drivers who simply had to come in), had it not been for this Nico Rosberg could have foiled Renault’s plot. On the other hand though it took the FIA ages to hand out a stop-go penalty for a clear offence, allowing Rosberg to build up a big lead – why? In other races these penalties were announced during the relevant safety car period. If you must have a rule like that, should it be enforced.
I was thinking about this the other day and although I can understand why the FIA did not want to come down too hard on Renault at a time when they were seriously considering quitting F1, I think at the very least Renault should have had their constructors trophy from the race taken away from them, rather like how Olympique Marseille were stripped of their 1993 UEFA Champions League title after they were found guilty of match-fixing (I should probably also emphasise that the trophy was not awarded to runners up AC Milan in this case).
I love the Istanbul Park circuit, probably my favourite of the Tilke tracks, but realistically I accept the Turkish Grand Prix isn’t likely to be a success event in the current era.
@Mark, I agree with your suggestion about building a replica, but build it in France! With that circuit the French GP would be a certainty to return to the calendar, although come to think of it, a replica in Germany instead would solve a few problems too. Not going to happen of course…I couldn’t agree more about Just Drive, it was a terrible and rather cheesy choice for an F1 intro in my opinion. It worked when used as an outro as a one-off by the BBC when mixed with montage footage, when the lyrics were new and you could appreciate how they fitted in with the clips used, but at the start of every race the novelty wears off. Also, it just sounds so… well… like a Take That song. I don’t like Take That anyway (no offence meant to anyone who likes them) but that sound just isn’t right for F1.
As someone who much prefers classic rock music I have to admit I’d absolutely love it if they used Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. I absolutely love the driving intro and it is everything that F1 should be and Just Drive isn’t – hard, raw, powerful and exciting. I’d love to hear it over footage of a grand prix start.
Anything rocking would be good as far as I’m concerned though. I’m not so keen on techno-type stuff but I think it can work, although my knowledge of that style of music is limited so I can’t suggest anything. The Chain is absolutely perfect for F1 but I don’t think Sky will use it as long as the BBC continues to cover F1, and of course ITV never used it when they had the sole rights.
In 2007 I think there were specific moments for Alonso and Hamilton where they both lost the championship in the showdown at Interlagos – in Alonso’s case it was the superior getaways made by the Ferraris which meant that he’d be third at best, not quite enough to beat Hamilton to the title regardless of what Raikkonen did, while Raikkonen was in a position to win as soon as he got into second place with only his team mate ahead. Hamilton lost it with the 30 second gearbox failure which caused him to plummet down the order. He had already gone off track earlier but he had already made it back into the fifth place he needed to become champion IIRC, but after that point he had too much ground to make up.
Come to think of it, Alonso looked like he’d lost it at Fuji after crashing out, leaving him 12 points behind his team mate with two races to go, but Hamilton’s slip into the pit lane gravel trap at Shanghai cut his lead to 4 points so Alonso was very much in with a chance going into the Brazilian GP.
Jacques Villeneuve’s defence of his title ended in the 1998 Australian GP when the McLaren-Mercedes cars lapped his Williams-Mecachrome (indeed, they lapped both Williams drivers), with only Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari able to get close before having to retire. I don’t remember this but at the time a season of McLaren domination would have looked a certainty, and really it was only MSC’s brilliance (Hungary remains perhaps the outstanding example) that prevented this. I guess you can argue that he lost his title when Williams lost works Renault support, although I’d say that Williams probably still thought they do better than they did with what was essentially the old Renault engine.
In my time, starting from 2007, I agree that Kobayashi at Toyota in 2009 was one of the best in recent times even though he only did two races. It’s easy to forget now but his results in the main GP2 series were mediocre and had it not been for his impressive performances in those two races he would most likely never have made it into F1. I still wonder what Kobayashi would have achieved in the 2010 Toyota had they stayed in F1, I’m not sure it would have been as good as it was claimed to be, but it would still probably have been significantly better than that year’s very unreliable Sauber.
I can’t remember 2006, but I think I’d have enjoyed seeing Kubica come in at BMW to replace Villeneuve as it saw a very promising talent replace a has-been that BMW never really wanted and felt obliged to retain due to the two-year deal he signed with Sauber prior to the takeover.
Vitantonio Liuzzi replacing Fisichella at Force India for the final five races of 2009 was one of the better ones I can recall, in a year where a lot was made of how difficult it was for drivers to come in out of the cold into F1 cars (just look at Grosjean’s 2009 performances, not to mention Fisi’s struggles to adapt to the Ferrari), Liuzzi was on the pace straight away at Monza and could easily have made it a double points finish for the team – potentially the first such finish for over five years going back to the 2004 Canadian race when they were still Jordan (I will not count the 2005 US GP farce) – if his car hadn’t broken down.
Of the ones I can remember, the worst IMO was Lotus Renault replacing Heidfeld with Bruno Senna – the grubby dismissal of the former left a bad taste in the mouth and after a good debut at Spa Senna achieved little, while the team came close to surrendering fifth in the champion due to his lack of results. Heidfeld hadn’t been brilliant, but I think he’d have done a better job in the remaining races.
Good point about the wins gained by disqualifications – I’ll add that Prost is in the strange position of having lost on an on track win after he was disqualified from the 1985 San Marino race, but he also gained a victory at the 1982 Brazilian GP having only finished third but Piquet (1st) and Rosberg (2nd) were both disqualified for the water-cooled brakes.
Damon Hill gained a win in the 1994 Belgian GP after Schumacher’s disqualification for skid plank wear, although when Schumacher was disqualified from the same year’s British GP Hill had won the race on track so that one doesn’t count.
Great to see that I’m not alone in doing this! I’ve really enjoyed reading all the lyrics so far.
@David Not Coulthard, I’ve recently started to get into Gabriel Genesis and I’ve really liked what I’ve heard. In fact I’m listening to SEBTP right now (funnily enough I’m currently listening to Cinema Show). Doing an F1 version of Moonlit Knight is probably beyond my skill though unfortunately.Re: Heikki, I agree he was rather unlucky in the early part of 2008. However, he failed to impress in the latter half of that campaign – he did get a fair bit of luck with his extremely fortuitous Hungarian GP victory and it was rare to see him ahead of a Ferrari, costing McLaren the WCC.
Couldn’t agree more about Lewis Hamilton in 2012 though, the amount of misfortune he endured that season was ridiculous. The Singapore engine failure was perhaps the most unfortunate moment, as at that stage he was second in the championship. At the very least he should have finished third – he was certainly better than Webber that season and faster than Raikkonen (whose championship position was mostly due to consistency). Perhaps it was no wonder he left McLaren to join Mercedes (at a time when McLaren was clearly the more competitive of those two teams and a Mercedes withdrawal may have been just a couple of poor years away).
Another unlucky one I’ve thought of is Mark Webber (again!) in 2007, his first year at Red Bull, when he lost a possible podium finish in Fuji when Vettel hit him behind the safety car, was running strongly in Brazil when he suffered an engine failure and was generally quick but had a very unreliable car that season which often let him down in good positions. Coulthard finished four points above him in the standings but Webber clearly had the more impressive year (the only potential points DC lost through a failure were I think in Bahrain).
In the last few years, had Sergio Perez won the 2012 Malaysian GP then that would have gone done as a pretty great underdog victory, given that Sauber has never won a race as an independent team and that was probably the closest they ever came to doing so. Even so, second place was a fine underdog moment.
2012 was quite a good year for underdogs to impress actually – Nico Hulkenberg led much of the Brazilian GP on merit in the Force India while Maldonado’s Spanish GP win was unexpected. Although he was clearly helped by Hamilton’s demotion to the back of the grid, there had been no indications that Williams was about to end its winless run and although the Williams was fast that season they hadn’t looked like winning before then and no one would have picked Maldonado as a likely race winner at the start of the year. By contrast, if Massa or Bottas won a race this season, it wouldn’t feel like an underdog triumph as they’ve consistently been near the sharp end of the field (I think it would be comparable to BMW’s win in Canada in 2008, with the third best team winning the race).
When I read that Villeneuve had replaced Heidfeld, as someone who has always quite liked Quick Nick I had to laugh as it’s the story of his racing career. He beats or matches his team-mate but then the team-mate gets the career breaks! Hopefully he’ll get a better drive elsewhere in the series. It is quite a coup for Formula E to have a former F1 world champion in the series though.
I didn’t watch any of the Formula E e-Prixs last year although I am quite tempted to give it a look this year (despite my reservations about watching a racing series which uses ‘fan boost’). From the reports I read I believe Heidfeld was unlucky and didn’t get the results he should have for various reasons?
Agreed! It was an entertaining change from the usual interviews.
I hope he sticks to his words ‘I’ll be back’!
Actually, another podium which I found quite funny for the interviews was at Abu Dhabi in 2012 where both Vettel and Raikkonen swore on live TV. Then again it was Coulthard doing the interviews… I distinctly remember his comments after his accident with Massa at the 2008 Australian GP where he outlined just what he’d do to the then Ferrari driver if he didn’t apologise!
Thanks for the clarification, bob. I can add a few examples and add to what others have said so far.
Massa and Alonso have already been mentioned – I think this is probably the most obvious example of recent years where it could not be more clear that Alonso was the favoured driver (frankly, I can’t blame Ferrari as his performances were for the most part clearly superior) to me the 2010 Germany race was the event that summed up their entire four years as team-mates. As Rob Smedley was forced to tell Massa over the radio:
‘Okay. So, Fernando. Is. Faster. Than. You. Can you confirm you understood that message’.
Ironically, in that year’s Australian race Ferrari should probably have said something similar to Massa who was holding up Alonso – Massa finished third with Alonso fourth and I seem to remember second placed Robert Kubica commenting at the time that defending his position would have been more difficult had the other Ferrari been behind him – given that Alonso lost the title by just 4 points in the end the loss of at least 3 points, possibly 6, came back to haunt him. It is rather easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight though.
Of course, another example of a team having clear number 1 and number 2 drivers (with Alonso again being a beneficiary) was Renault in 2008. I read an interview with Nelson Piquet Jr in F1 racing before Crashgate was exposed where he said ‘Why I would I deliberately crash to help my team-mate win?’. Ahem! Still, you can’t argue Alonso had the beating of Piquet – it was a crushingly dominant 18-0 in the Spaniard’s favour in qualifying that season.
Massa helped Raikkonen win the 2007 Brazilian GP to ensure that the Finn took the world title, the following year Raikkonen gave second place to his team-mate to improve the Brazilian’s hopes of winning the crown at his home race. However, don’t forget that Massa won Turkey 2007 from Raikkonen and likewise Raikkonen won Spain 2008 from Massa, so the team had no problem with letting the drivers race. It would have been difficult to justify the leader moving over though in either case – in fact, after Spain 2008 I thought Raikkonen looked the most likely candidate for the WDC (after two wins and a second place in his first four races) and at the 2007 Turkish race Massa was still in with a shot at the world title and actually 1 point ahead of Raikkonen after the race.
In a less obvious example of number 1 and number 2 drivers, David Coulthard has spoken in the past of how he felt Mika Hakkinen was the ‘favourite son’ at McLaren and this perception is probably at least partially due to the use of team orders at the 1997 Spanish GP and 1998 Australian GP where he had to concede victories to Hakkinen. Coulthard made a sarcastic remark along the lines of ‘I’ve finished doing my charity work now’ after handing the lead back to Hakkinen at the latter race. Having said that, there were races where David did lead Mika home in a 1-2, such as the 2000 British and French GPs. Then again I can remember Webber leading Red Bull 1-2 finishes ahead of Vettel in 2010, and look how that turned out, and I think it became clear who the favourite son was at that team!